Miriam Szamet

Research Fellow 2016-17

CV

Miriam Szamet is currently a doctoral student in the department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is writing her dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Yfaat Weiss, on the cultural transfer of theories and ideas in pedagogy during the firsts decades of the the 20th century to Palestine. Szamet completed her undergraduate studies with Honors in History (2008) and graduated with a Master's degree in Contemporary Jewry (2010), both at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her MA thesis focused on the life and work of Zionist feminist educator, Puah Rakovsky. She is also the recipient of the Hebrew University President's Scholarship for Outstanding Doctoral Students (2012-2015), and the of the Leo Baeck Fellowship Program (2016), at the same time, she has spent three years as a research fellow for the Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center at the Hebrew University.

Research Project

Szamet's dissertation is entitled, "Immigration and Education: Pedagogues and the Pedagogical Discourse in the Yishuv Palestine". Her work explores the education discourse of the Modern Jewish community by tracing its cultural roots to the reform pedagogies of Europe. By focusing on the transfer, absorption, in some cases rejection, and amalgamation of these theories, this research seeks to create a more expansive picture of the early Zionist project and in particular how the culture of its educational landscape extended far beyond the geography of Palestine.